ProISV Announces Microsoft Dynamics AX Hosting on Amazon EC2 Cloud

ProISV, a small Danish software company, announced that it has developed AX Cloud, a hosting solution that allows Microsoft partners to managed their customers' Microsoft Dynamics AX systems on Amazon's EC2 cloud platform. ProISV says its partners can offer their clients a more flexible and less expensive alternative to self-hosting or traditional partner hosting of Microsoft Dynamics AX.

While it may seem strange to see a Dynamics-focused company making its push into cloud with Amazon rather than Microsoft, ProISV partner Niels Skjoldager explains in the following interview that the case for using Windows Azure - their first choice - was simply not there. 

In a telephone interview, Skjoldager discussed AX Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics hosting:

Q. Can you explain how you are running Microsoft Dynamics AX from the Amazon cloud service? 

A. We install everything in the cloud including the entire AX infrastructure, the SQL database and everything the customer might need. We also have technology that makes it easy to integrate Dynamics AX with other applications that run on the Microsoft infrastructure. So basically everything can run in the same cloud infrastructure. But we also offer customers the ability to synchronize their data to servers on their own premises if they need or want that. So that data in the cloud is always available offline.

Q. Have you had any input from Microsoft on using the Amazon cloud? And will you deploy AX to an Azure-hosted environment?

A. They haven't exactly sent us any love notes. Maybe they did and they got lost. Mr. [Steve] Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) has yet to come visit and congratulate us in person. Microsoft ...